比爾蓋茲在天堂的冒險

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Ever wondered what heaven looks like ?
Bill Gates died and, much to everyone's surprise, went to Heaven. When he
got there, he had to wait in the reception area.
Heaven's reception area was the size of Massachusetts. There were literally
millions of people milling about, living in tents with nothing to do all
day. Food and water were being distributed from the backs of trucks, while
staffers with clipboards slowly worked their way through the crowd. Bill
lived in a tent for three weeks until, finally, one of the staffers
approached him. The staffer was a young man in his late teens, face scarred
with acne. He was wearing a blue T-shirt with the words TEAM PETER
emblazoned on it in large yellow lettering.
&quotHello,&quot said the staffer in a bored voice that could have been the voice of
any clerk in any overgrown bureaucracy. &quotMy name is Gabriel and I'll be your
induction coordinator.&quot Bill started to ask a question, but Gabriel
interrupted him. &quotNo, I'm not the Archangel Gabriel. I'm just a guy from
Philadelphia named Gabriel who died in a car wreck at the age of 17. Now
give me your name, last name first, unless you were Chinese in which case
it's first name first.&quot
&quotGates, Bill.&quot Gabriel started searching though the sheaf of papers on his
clipboard, looking for Bill's Record of Earthly Works.
&quotWhat's going on here?&quot asked Bill. &quotWhy are all these people here? Where's
Saint Peter? Where are the Pearly Gates?&quot
Gabriel ignored the questions until he located Bill's records. Then Gabriel
looked up in surprise. &quotIt says here that you were the president of a large
software company. Is that right?&quot
&quotYes.&quot
&quotWell then, do the math chip-head! When this Saint Peter business started,
it was an easy gig. Only a hundred or so people died every day, and Peter
could handle it all by himself, no problem. But now there are over five
billion people on earth. Jesus, when God said to 'go forth and multiply,' he
didn't say 'like rabbits!' With that large a population, ten thousand people
die every hour. Over a quarter-million people a day. Do you think Peter can
meet them all personally?&quot &quotI guess not.&quot
&quotYou guess right.&quot
So Peter had to franchise the operation. Now, Peter is the CEO of Team Peter
Enterprises, Inc. He just sits in the corporate headquarters and sets
policy. Franchisees like me handle the actual inductions.&quot Gabriel looked
though his paperwork some more, and then continued. &quotYour paperwork seems to
be in order. And with a background like yours, you'll be getting a plum job
assignment.&quot
&quotJob assignment?&quot
&quotOf course. Did you expect to spend the rest of eternity sitting on your ass
and drinking ambrosia? Heaven is a big operation. You have to pull your
weight around here!&quot Gabriel took out a triplicate form, had Bill sign at
the bottom, and then tore out the middle copy and handed it to Bill. &quotTake
this down to induction center #23 and meet up with your occupational
orientator. His name is Abraham.&quot Bill started to ask a question, but
Gabriel interrupted him. &quotNo, he's not *that* Abraham.&quot Bill walked down a
muddy trail for ten miles until he came to induction center #23. He met with
Abraham after a mere six-hour wait.
&quotHeaven is centuries behind in building its data processing infrastructure,&quot
explained Abraham. &quotAs you've seen, we're still doing everything on paper.
It takes us a week just to process new entries.&quot
&quotI had to wait *three* weeks,&quot said Bill. Abraham stared at Bill angrily,
and Bill realized that he'd made a mistake. Even in Heaven, it's best not to
contradict a bureaucrat. &quotWell,&quot Bill offered, &quotmaybe that Bosnia thing has
you guys backed up.&quot
Abraham's look of anger faded to mere annoyance. &quotYour job will be to
supervise Heaven's new data processing center. We're building the largest
computing facility in creation. Half a million computers connected by a
multi-segment fiber optic network, all running into a back-end server
network with a thousand CPUs on a gigabit channel. Fully fault tolerant.
Fully distributed processing. The works.&quot
Bill could barely contain his excitement. &quotWow! What a great job! This is
really Heaven!&quot
&quotWe're just finishing construction, and we'll be starting operations soon.
Would you like to go see the center now?&quot
&quotYou bet!&quot
Abraham and Bill caught the shuttle bus and went to Heaven's new data
processing center. It was a truly huge facility, a hundred times bigger than
the Astrodome. Workmen were crawling all over the place, getting the miles
of fiber optic cables properly installed. But the center was dominated by
the computers. Half a million computers, arranged neatly row-by-row, half a
million ........ Macintoshes ........ all running Claris software! Not a PC
in sight! Not a single byte of Microsoft code!
The thought of spending the rest of eternity using products that he had
spent his whole life working to destroy was too much for Bill.
&quotWhat about PCs???&quot he exclaimed. &quotWhat about Windows??? What about Excel???
What about Word???&quot
&quotYou're forgetting something,&quot said Abraham.
&quotWhat's that?&quot asked Bill plaintively.
&quotThis is Heaven,&quot explained Abraham. &quotWe need a computer system that's
heavenly to use. If you want to build a data processing center based on PCs
running Windows, then ....
.... GO TO HELL!&quot